Brand New Conditions
by Reminiscent Lullaby
Summary: Three weeks after Heroes' Day, Adrien notices something off about Nathalie, leading her and Gabriel to discuss questions of love, regret, sacrifice, and perhaps most imminently, death. Spoilers for Mayura.


**Now that Season 2 is over, I really wanted to write about Miraculous Ladybug, and particularly these characters. I did not expect to ship Nathalie and Gabriel so much, but in the span of a few episodes, their relationship became one of the most intriguing and complex aspects of this show. I was absolutely blown away by their dynamic. Given what we now know about the peacock miraculous, I'm extremely curious to see what becomes of Mayura in Season 3 and to learn more details about Emilie's coma/maybe death? Still unclear?**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own _Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Chat Noir_ or its characters. **

**Please enjoy, review, and let me know what you thought of Season 2!**

"Nathalie, are you okay?"

She looked up from her tablet. They had been sitting in the same usual stretch of silence that persisted through the length of Adrien's dinners. He'd taken his first bite fifteen minutes ago, and as Nathalie observed when she glanced his way, he hadn't gotten much further than that.

It had distracted her from the query that provoked her attention. "Are you not hungry?"

He set his fork down so as to answer her efficiently. She nodded, understanding, then he asked again, "But are you okay?"

"Me? Yes, I'm fine, Adrien." Thinking that had settled it, she looked back to her tablet. She'd been in the middle of viewing an annoyingly verbose email, and realized with a surge of exasperation as she resumed that she hadn't a clue what she had read for the last two paragraphs. She scrolled back up to restart.

"Are you sure?"

Nathalie's finger paused and she narrowed her gaze at the boy. "Yes."

Her brevity discouraged him. Leaf-green eyes flitted across the dining table, and she could perceive his search for the words necessary to get more out of her. Finally, his stare came to a rest on her unreadable visage. He pushed his plate back a couple inches to demonstrate that he wasn't going to let that be the end of their conversation. "I'm sorry, it's just that something about you seems…off."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "How so?"

"Well," Adrien sighed, leaning back in his chair, "For one, you're sitting."

Nathalie would have laughed if circumstances were different. Instead, uneasiness started to creep up her spine. Involuntarily, she fidgeted in her seat. "Is that a problem?"

He seemed to notice her discomfort, because he averted his shiny, boyish gaze. "No, but you just - you never sit with me. You always stand, and stare at the wall, with your hands behind your back, and," he swallowed, "Sorry, but I'm just not used to it."

Nathalie's chair scraped the floor as she pushed it back. "If it makes you more comfortable that I stand, then I can stand."

"No, I didn't mean-"

He cut himself off when she faltered for a moment, planting her hands on the table to steady herself. Nathalie's vision swam, dark spots tarnishing her view of the wall across from her. Her tablet fell between her feet, and the clatter of it on the marble floor startled them both, as though it had sliced through a layer of quiet their voices weren't loud enough to breach.

Adrien murmured, "Nathalie?"

Her eyes were shut so tightly that it made her face hurt. "I stood too quickly."

"This…this is what I really mean when I ask if you're okay."

"I'm fine. Head-rush."

Her eyes opened to slits. The strong golden light of the setting sun was coming through the window and sent a stream of sharp pain through her head. She gazed at her hands, fingers spread centimeters apart, and suddenly they felt heavy as anchors. Letting out a trembling breath, she gradually lowered herself to pick up her tablet. Once she was on the floor, she feared rising again. Adrien saw the pause.

"Let me help you," he said, rushing from his seat to her side. He ignored her when she insisted she was capable of standing herself and held her arm while she clutched the tablet to her chest. Adrien felt her sway. "You should lie down."

He led her to the living room. Nathalie nearly fell onto the sofa, her head hitting the stiff decorative pillow that had probably gone untouched for months. Adrien disappeared for a minute while she watched the ceiling spin and returned with a tall glass of water. She downed about half of it before setting it down on the floor beside her. Everything was slowly coming into focus. Adrien sat on the ottoman and gazed at her with such immense concern. It reminded her of his mother.

"Thank you," she said, trying to dismiss him, but her voice was weak.

"Are you sick?" asked Adrien.

Aware that denying him was useless while she was in such a state, Nathalie placed a hand on her forehead. "Perhaps a bit under the weather."

"Yo-you can barely be upright!" exclaimed the boy with incredulity, he scooted the ottoman closer and squinted to look more particularly at her face. "And your paler than usual, like, almost gray."

Insecure, she glanced away. A tiny weight rested on her chest - the peacock miraculous, which she kept in the breastpocket of her blazer. Her heart raced and the brooch throbbed with it. Nathalie was unable to find a response to Adrien's troubled remark, so she grabbed the glass and drank down the rest of the water.

"Should I get father?" Adrien softly asked.

"Don't bother him," she said, perhaps too sharply, because he flinched at the tone of her voice. "He's busy tonight."

"He's busy always," Adrien retorted with thinly-veiled contempt. "If you're not well, then you should be getting rest. Don't overwork yourself. You're important."

She tried to sit up as Adrien stood and starting to walk out of the room. Her head pounded. "Adrien! Leave him be…" Nathalie's head collapsed back on the pillow. How had she managed the rest of the day? Since Heroes' Day three weeks prior, she would experience sudden waves of vertigo and illness over the course of the day, and had thought they were easing up as time went on. Maybe she had just gotten better at hiding it - she wasn't on her feet as much and she slept more - but Adrien had noticed that something was clearly wrong.

Gabriel had taken a break from sending out akuma attacks since his failed plan as Scarlet Hawkmoth, and Nathalie wondered if part of the reason was because he didn't want to encourage her to aid him as Mayura. He claimed he was working on new plans to take down the heroes down one-by-one rather than in a single fell-swoop, having convinced himself that if Ladybug hadn't had her team of Rena Rouge, Carapace, and Queen Bee, he would have succeeded. Nathalie was sure that as she lied there, he was contemplating his next move, but it was her condition that made him hesitate.

Despite how touched he was at her unyielding willingness to help him, Gabriel hadn't let her keep the miraculous, but all too certain she wouldn't go back for it given how weak it had made her, he hadn't thought to change the code to his vault. Nathalie wanted to be ready to use it at a moment's notice - had she been seconds too late, the butterfly miraculous would have been acquired by Ladybug, and the day would have been lost. And something about the peacock brooch made her feel more convicted. She'd been content to keep Gabriel's secrets at the start of his mission, but up until recently, she had been kept up at night by swarms of conflicted thoughts in her head: _This is wrong; he's doing it for a good reason; he's putting Adrien in danger; to save someone they both love and miss; but Paris feels like a minefield._ As much as it had hurt her to see him in such despair, Nathalie was relieved when he told her that he was giving up Hawkmoth after Style Queen had endangered Adrien's life. "It aches now," she'd wanted to say, "But you've done all you can. Moving on...it's the right thing to do."

But it hadn't lasted. Gabriel was too determined, too in love. It made her heart break. Nathalie knew she wasn't capable of stopping him, but her feelings were completely useless if Gabriel was ready to put everything on the line to save Emilie. She had a choice: watch in incurable anguish from a distance, or help him bring an end to this the only way he knew how, through victory.

In those precious minutes she spent as Mayura, everything had fallen into place for her. That power was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. For once, she was in control. She could feel what Hawkmoth felt the same way he did whenever he claimed a new victim for his cause. His despair was _delicious;_ it was like tracing the cracks in his heart and illustrating the essence of all his suffering in the sky. She'd known him then better than she had known him ever. She felt capable of anything.

Nathalie knew what was possible. She couldn't give it up.

A surge of nausea swept over her body, and she jerked to lay on her side. In that same moment, foot steps became audible on the cold white floor. Gabriel was standing over her seconds later, his hands behind his back. In her dizziness, she watched his face float over his rigid shoulders.

"Where's Adrien?" she asked thinly.

"I sent him to practice his piano." Gabriel sat on the same ottoman his son had minutes earlier. Nathalie could see him more clearly when he was level to her, and his face had twisted into a distraught grimace. "Lord, Nathalie, look at you."

She swallowed hard as she lifted her head. "It's fine, sir."

"It's not fine! You're worse off than-" he stopped and removed his glasses to pinch the bridge of his nose. "One use. One use, and here you are, looking like death."

"Thanks," she murmured sarcastically.

"I've no time for irony."

"This will pass, sir," Nathalie insisted. "It happens, you know. I was worse after Heroes' Day. The episodes are getting less frequent."

He put his glasses back on and released a deep sigh, eyes gleaning the walls of the room. By the door, there was a framed photo of himself and Emilie, taken a year or so before Adrien was born. They smiled earnestly towards the camera, youthful and free of worry. Nathalie followed his gaze and felt a pang of sadness. Gabriel said to her, "After what happened to Emilie, I just...I just don't understand how you could think that using that miraculous was a good idea."

"I suppose you would have rather been defeated."

He winced.

"There wasn't any other choice, sir." She shut her eyes against a powerful wave of dizziness and melted into the sofa. One arm reached around and clutched the pillow, drawing it from under her head to be held against her chest. Suddenly, she felt a hand on her forehead. Nathalie opened her eyes and saw Gabriel leaning over her.

"Your skin is freezing," he remarked grimly. Under his breath, but loud enough for her to hear, he said, "It's like you're already dead."

Nathalie felt a lash of indignation and shot up, startling him back. Everything in her vision darkened and dissolved together, as grainy as the static on a broken old television. Her head throbbed, her ears screaming with a high-pitched ring that drowned whatever it was that Gabriel was saying to her. She fell forward, and he caught her. Her head fell on the curve between his neck and his shoulder. He was warm. She wrapped her arms around him for the steadiness and growled into his suit jacket, "Don't say things like that!" She made fists into his back. "How do you think that makes me feel?"

He was completely frozen for a moment before he gently placed his hands around her waist. Nathalie was practically dead weight. He wanted to ease her back onto the sofa, but a part of him feared that if he moved her, she would break, as if she were made of glass. Instead, he continued to hold her. They were both on their knees, shrouded in light that was growing ever darker as the night advanced towards them like a siege they couldn't stop. At some point, they were holding their breath at the same time, hearing the soft, mournful piano notes that Adrien played dutifully a floor above them. It reminded them that they weren't alone in the world.

Nathalie's arms relaxed. Slowly, she started to look up. After a five-second eternity, she was gazing into Gabriel's face, inches from him. His dark blue eyes observed her expression, passive. He was waiting for her to speak first.

She started to lean back against the sofa, but neither or them let go. They continued to hold each other. "Sir, I'm sorry," she murmured.

This seemed to alarm him. "No, no. I'm the one who should apologize. I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry, Nathalie."

"But it's true, isn't it?" Her voice broke. "I'm really not okay."

Instead of replying, he pulled her back into him. She started to cry, not hard, but silent tears were rolling down cheeks to dampen his shoulder. "I just wanted to help," she breathed. Her voice, usually so firm and decisive, sounded as though it belonged to a frightened child. "That's all I cared about. And Mayura, she made me feel so strong. She was so strong."

As if on cue, Gabriel stiffened. He pulled back, looking at her chest. Nathalie would have felt embarrassed and uncomfortable had she not known exactly what had aroused his attention. With a shaking hand, she reached into her breast pocket and pulled out the peacock miraculous. It was furiously vivid against her pale palm. They both stared down at it wordlessly. The brooch appeared completely normal; anybody else would never have assumed there was something wrong with it. Nathalie and Gabriel knew better, though. A darkness settled around them. The room fell away, leaving nothing but their kneeling bodies and the miraculous.

Finally, Gabriel gave her the most heartbreaking look. "Nathalie..."

"I might need it again."

"You kept it."

Her surroundings had stopped spinning, but she still felt weak. "I haven't been wearing it. Just keeping it in my pocket." She pulled herself up to sit back on the sofa, and Gabriel sat next to her, putting his hands on his head. "But doesn't that show that the damage is done?"

"Shit," he cursed. "I mean - _shit_. Nathalie, I haven't wanted to believe this is real."

She wiped a tear away that was still sliding down her cheek. Staring down at the brooch, she remembered the euphoric sensation that had enveloped her when she put it on for the first time. The malice and lunacy that had driven her as Catalyst melted away like wax in the fire of her blooming power. Later, it had all vanished, and Gabriel found her on the floor of his lair, kept conscious only by the bouts of coughing that wracked her body. The contrast in strength was horribly vast. The only thing that could steal her from the pain now was to be Mayura. Mayura, who felt untouchable, dynamic, perfect.

Mayura, who was responsible for destroying Nathalie.

Coming to this conclusion, she thoughtlessly let her head fall against Gabriel's shoulder. He froze, inhaling sharply, and tension was pulled in the air until he finally placed a hand over her knee in comfort. The darkness in the room lifted into the twilight, cool and peaceful beyond the windows.

"It's too late," she said, almost emotionlessly. "Whatever's going to happen to me will happen." Made shameless by the realization of her mortality, she curled her arm into his, trying to be as close to him as she could. He didn't pull away, and whether it was due to pity or guilt, she couldn't tell. Nathalie tightened her fist over the miraculous, as though she could crush it and absorb the magic into her skin. "Unless we fix it."

His own hand reached for the scarf that hid his own miraculous from view. The far-off look he had been wearing hardened into resolve. "And we will." He glanced down at her, the ghost of a smile on his face. "Together."

As the distant music of Adrien's piano-playing fell like shadows around them, they were bound to brand new conditions: Nathalie to a race against death, and Gabriel to the burden of a new promise, gravely similar to his first.


End file.
